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Anyway, since most of that loan was already granted less then a month after Obamas inauguration... http://www.redherring.com/home/25831

Larry Ellison has already stated that he estimates Oracle was making about as much money from Java technology as Sun was. So whether or not the Java business was profitable for Sun, Oracle already knows how to productize it into profit, particularly after their purchase of BEA Weblogic. They paid 8.5B for BEA just to have a leading Java enterprise stack; do you really think they'd have fired Gosling when they consider Java that strategic?

People if you want real breaking science and engineering news try Eureka Alerts, no forum but at least they don't pull shit like this every other week. For the sake of god there isn't even a printable version on 95% of the ad farming websites anymore because they know we would link to it. Who has time to click a page 14 times like a trained seal for a piece of tinned herring? Speaking of herring there is a technically inclined one that does not link to ad farms. Seriously, Slashdot editors if you read this, you know we are all using Adblock Plus, well at least I have ever since your animated banners showed up, do you really think we of all people would tolerate linking to a page like this? I honestly used to look forward to being able to click on your ads after reading the article because they were mostly unobtrusive, often fun and half the time relevant but I am physically incapable of reading something on a page that has animations without frustration and discomfort. I mean who can honestly absorb a significant amount of information that way? It is the Power Point presentation level of discourse, the executive summary level of detail and the blasé attitude from site administrators that their visitors would tolerate something they would not because it sells 1% more ad dollars for 10x the ads that sickens me to the point of loathing and disgust. Grrrr!

And tomorrow: Cuba!

A perfect example. Hacking a Yahoo account is fairly trivial. It was some 20 year old kid that just did some simple password guessing.

And of course, the FBI came down on him like a ton of bricks.

I wonder if someone illegally gained access to my email account if they would even notice. I'm guessing not.

> What is needed to make your case is a statistical analysis that says C.S. majors earn less and are unable to find work.

Actually no, becuase that was not my case. A BSCS may be employable, but he or she would have been better off to have chosen a different major.

BSCSs may earn more than IT workers who have no degrees, in some cases. But, often there is little, in any, difference. Employers want experience, not degrees, look at the job ads.

Unlike doctors, lawyers, engineers, CPAs, nurses, or many other professions; a BSCS is not a hard requirement for most IT jobs. The degree has very little value relative to it's cost and difficulty. Add that to the aggressive offshoring of IT professionals, and it seems to me that a students time, effort, and money, would be better spent elsewhere.

And here is some data to back that up:

> "According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about *300,000* jobs, but during the period in question, a probable *669,681* H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

> "Gates claims that Microsoft needs more H-1b to hire new foreign graduates. But there are many U.S. graduates with several years of experience trying to find work at Microsoft and other employers - but Gates does not open these "entry level" positions to these Americans. Why? Experienced Americans are only considered for the positions that require an arbitrary 3 to 7 years of experience in several specific skills - then the Americans are summarily rejected for not meeting all of those arbitrary qualifications."

http://tinyurl.com/358alw

> "Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=us

> "Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motapr04,0,4870738.story

> "Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095

> "AMD axes 10% of its staff"
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36823/167/

> "Yahoo Profits Slip; To Cut 1,000 Jobs"
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/yahoo-profits-s.html

> "Google lays off about 300 at DoubleClick"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1

> "EBay Cuts 125 Jobs in Europe, North America"
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080320/ebay_jobs.html?.v=4

> "CNET to Lay Off 120"
http://www.redherring.com/Home/24032

> "At least 160 employees at CBS Corp. . . were let go"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stations9apr09,1,7495348.story

> Applied

Wait, you're suggesting by "I dont know of any company that could afford to beat out the fossil fuel companies to do so." that there aren't companies in the US trying to make money off alternative energy? Further, lots of state governments are actively trying to promote alternative energy, which undermines the theory that the government is afraid of a tax revenue collapse. State governments are subsidizing alternative energy using those very tax revenues, in the hopes that home-grown alternative energy producers will create even more tax revenue in the future.

I hate to sound like a slashvertisement, but I think the following US companies and groups would all disagree with you:

Evergreen Solar (producer based in Mass.)
Heliodyne (producer based in California)
Google (installing panels on its roof)
Solar Energy Industry Association (US trade group)
Tesla Motors) (selling 100% electric cars in the US)
List of solar manufacturers in the US
US solar power installations increase 33% year-to-year

The New York Times has a story about this issue: "Venture Capital Rushes into Alternate Energy" suggesting that $1.5 billion in VC money was invested in 2006 alone in new companies who hope to profit from overthrowing the energy status quo. If you add private equity money then there was $18.1 billion in dealflow in 2006 in the alternate energy sector. Or listen to a 2004 story about the same issue.

It's nice to think that there's some great conspiracy against alternate energy, but the simple truth is that there is a lot of market action in the field and nothing stopping people from making money in it. There is a HUGE amount of money to be made from alternate energy and plenty of people are trying to make it.

I read it in a forbes article prior to the submission, unfortunately I cannot find that source now. Here is an alternative one:

http://www.redherring.com/Home/22624

Or they can click a button to make the banner disappear, or simply ignore the banner, which will vanish after 10 seconds.

How about Marvel do what's right for a change and pay the creators their fair dues.

Stan Lee Media sued Marvel Entertainment for $5 billion Thursday, claiming it co-owns Marvel's superhero characters, including Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Incredible Hulk.

The company is no longer owned by Stan Lee, the comic book legend who more recently hosted the TV series Who Wants to Be a Superhero? on the Sci-Fi Channel, which was produced by his latest company, Pow Entertainment.

In the suit, filed in the Southern District of New York, Stan Lee Media seeks to assert rights to the revenue generated by its superheroes that Marvel Entertainment is profiting from.

For Marvel to come out swinging at Hollywood on money rights is the pot calling the kettle black

And the fact that if you want to use any programs on linux you usually have to compile the source yourself.

And the fact that there are no human interface designers working on the linux project.

Mark Shuttleworth said "there are probably at least 8 million [Ubuntu] users" in an interview here.

is in your fuel.

10: Solar Energy + CO2 + ??? -> BioFuel ( Sequestered Carbon )
20: BioFuel -> Energy to move car + C02 + ???
30: goto 10

almost everything in this cycle already exists...just not a way to make '???' efficient. My personal guess is on bio-engineered algae cultures for producing bio-diesel...almost 250% more efficient that producing bio-diesel from soybeans.

It must be said that some claim that the tecnology to harness algae is a long way from being commercially viable, however, the efficiency, as well as having the answer to food vs fuel makes it a much more attractive long term solution, and should be pursued irregardless if other methods of bio-diesel generation can be brought to market quicker.

just my 2cents.

Given the numbers coming out, I'd think that it sure can't hurt for these guys to post the number they are.

Here(2nd page ) Mark Shuttleworth mentioned Ubuntu having 8 million active users:

http://redherring.com/PrintArticle.aspx?a=20497&se ctor=Briefings

Now what are the hardware vendors waiting for? Permission from Microsoft?

LoB

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20928&hed =Norway%3A+iTunes+is+a+Lawbreaker&sector=Regions&s ubsector=Europe

And when a monopolist uses illegal business tactics you use the law to ensure interoperability, cooperation, and a competative free market, you don't sign contracts or agreements with a corporation known to use illegal business tactics to destroy competition.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=19883&hed =Microsoft+Meets+EU+Deadline

In Plastics Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. But read more

This research work has been done partially at the MIT in Professor Robert Langers research lab. Please note that Ive already covered a previous Langers project in "Light Used to Design Shape-Shifting Plastics" (April 14, 2005).

For this new kind of plastic, Langer worked with Professor Andreas Lendlein, director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the GKSS Research Center in Teltow, Germany, and his team.

This research work has been published online before print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "Polymeric triple-shape materials" (November 20, 2006). Here is a link to the abstract.

Shape-memory polymers represent a promising class of materials that can move from one shape to another in response to a stimulus such as heat. Thus far, these systems are dual-shape materials. Here, we report a triple-shape polymer able to change from a first shape (A) to a second shape (B) and from there to a third shape (C). Shapes B and C are recalled by subsequent temperature increases. Whereas shapes A and B are fixed by physical cross-links, shape C is defined by covalent cross-links established during network formation.

The triple-shape effect is a general concept that requires the application of a two-step programming process to suitable polymers and can be realized for various polymer networks whose molecular structure allows formation of at least two separated domains providing pronounced physical cross-links. These domains can act as the switches, which are used in the two-step programming process for temporarily fixing shapes A and B. It is demonstrated that different combinations of shapes A and B for a polymer network in a given shape C can be obtained by adjusting specific parameters of the programming process.

Below is a series of photographs illustrating this triple-shape effect. On the left is a tube which could be used as a stent and on the right is fastener consisting of a plate with anchors. From top to bottom, you can see the shape evolution when the temperature increases to 40C (in B) and 60C (in C). (Credit: MIT/GKSS Research Center). This image has been extracted from the PNAS paper mentioned above.

Picture

In "Morphing Materials Take On New Shapes," Technology Review describes this process in plain English.

Lendlein says the key to the new structures was developing two types of polymers that have distinct melting points. At room temperature, the material holds its first shape. But when heated above a certain temperature, areas throughout the material soften, allowing it to change to an intermediate shape. At a yet higher transition temperature, the rest of the material softens, allowing the structure to take its final shape.

But what would be these

Here's IBM's side of the story. Even with IBM writing the story you can see that IBM is basically claiming to own Amazon's business. I didn't read the actual patents (nor am I going to read them), so I can't tell you exactly what the claims are, but I wouldn't be surprised if any ecommerce site would infringe.

Now, if you happen to be the sort of person that happens to believe that IBM should own the concept of ecommerce whether or not they have written or sell code that is ecommerce related then I suppose we are going to have to simply agree to disagree. If not, then here's a little bit about the realities of software patents (and patents in general).

It is a common myth that software patents are commonly used to protect the "little guy" from the big guy. That is true in some cases, but only when the little guy doesn't actually write software. If you write software chances are really good that you are using one of IBM's patents without paying royalties. This means that IBM and most of the other large patent holders can do whatever they want, and if they happen to infringe on your patent and you take them to court they can simply bury you in patent lawsuits until you agree to settle your case and set up some sort of patent licensing deal (chances are good that you'll end up paying money).

These days companies are getting around this problem by simply not actually writing any software. This guarantees that they aren't infringing on anyone's patents. You can't force someone into a cross licensing deal that doesn't actually write software. These companies simply patent their ideas and wait for someone else to write the software. Once their patent is embedded in all sorts of software (say like IBM's ecommerce patents) they begin to go after companies that have actually written software.

IBM is a bit of a special case. It has so many patents that it can basically build a case against anyone. However, it also makes billions of dollars selling software, so it has to be careful and pick victims that don't have patents that it uses in its own software. That's the reason that IBM went after Amazon.com in this case. Amazon.com has patents, but it doesn't have any that IBM infringes on because IBM doesn't actually sell ecommerce software so it is relatively safe. Here's an article that talks about this.

I honestly doubt that you could find a single solitary example of a software patent suit that was "useful," and business method patents are worse. In the real world these types of patents simply don't work like they should. For the most part they are used by the large software development houses to keep the software development game an activity that only large, well-funded software houses can play. If you don't have the money to keep an army of lawyers busy creating patents then you are vulnerable to patent abuse. Even if you do hire the lawyers and obtain some patents these patents aren't going to help you if you actually write the software. If you write and sell software then you'll end up having little choice but to cross-license your patents (you'll probably pay a fee as well). That's why you hear so much in the news about companies that simply license their patents without actually writing software. These days its the only sane way to deal with the current patent regime. Unless, of course, you are IBM and have 40,000 patents already.

Excuse me if I think that a system that discourages companies from actually writing software is promoting innovation.

so they filed a patent. apple files patents all the time - what ever happened to the one they filed about the touchless click wheel? http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=17738&hed =Apple+Ponders+a+Touchless+iPod a filing like this does not mean it is the end of the road for the click wheel. the click wheel has brought apple a ton of revenue and one patent filing will not change all that. nothing to get excited about here.

There's this link from earlier in the year where it claims to be an online storage company:
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16146&hed =TransMedia+Site+Goes+Social

There's this link where it claims it will do magic with a PDA
www.pdastreet.com/articles/2006/5/2006-5-22-Glide- Mobile-Extended.html

I'm not sure how a single library/ies will magically make all of this interoperable because I've seen what it takes from an engineering side to attempt this sort of thing and it ain't pretty. I haven't even mentioned the Legal implications of pulling something off like this.

Oh, and where's the business model supporting all of this development?

But then I guess that's a win-win situation. People can now, finally, get something for nothing AND stick it to the music companies by not having to see/watch ads to get the product.

The only question is, and the article is short on this matter, will people be able to take the song and put it in any format they want for THEIR use?

This article does say that DRM will be incorporated into the songs to try and prevent sharing of the music but that still doesn't answer the question. The article also talks about how the ads might be inserted but nothing definite.

I don't think five-year planned economies work, and I don't think it works when you do software design, either. Linux development has always been a kind of open market, where the development direction gets set by customer demand, together with obviously a lot of what I simply call good taste--the avoidance of things that are obviously going to be problematic in the long run.

Warren Spector, go suck it.

AHAHAHAHA. Pompous ass.

Well, the article cited does say "Estimates have been $900 per console, according to Merrill Lynch analysts..." Let's see, $499 retail, minus $900 production cost equals...a good bit more than $400 per machine lost when you consider that Sony only gets about half of the retail price.

What article were you reading?

My apologies for crappy formatting on original comment:

There are two parts to this

Total of $1b

If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin.However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid. So if we lump the Veritas portion in at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006.

That's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded)

Plus interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest

Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts)
This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties.
Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties.

That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest.

Grand Total Potential claim - $3.607 Billion

Symantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges.

However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly.

No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already).

Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas. I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.

There's a more thorough version of this story at Red Herring http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16541&hed =Symantec+Faces+Hefty+Tax+Billor=Industries&subsec tor=SecurityAndDefense There are two parts to this Veritas claim $900m Symantec claim $100 m That's a total of $1b If you glance at the IRS rules for calculating penalties and interest your head will spin. However the penalty for not paying is 0.5% per month for every month not paid. so Veritas if we lump it all at the end of 2001 and say they didn't pay $900 million for 2002,3,4,5, and last 3 months of 2006 So that's $45 million per month for conservative 51 months = $2,295,000,000 in penalties excluding taxes (not compounded) Plust interest at 6% per year (not compounded) - $54 million per year for 4 years + $13.5 million last three months = $229,500,000 in Interest Then you have a $100 million Symantec Tax bill based on their subsidiary setup in an Irish tax haven to tranfer profits out of the US to Ireland (not making a moralistic comment just stating the facts) This is for 2003/2004, so if we look at it like it all happened at the end of 2004 for simplicity, we have 12 months in 2005 and 3 months in 2005 for penalties Or $5 million per month for 15 months = $75 million in penalties That leaves $6 million in interest for 2005 and $1.5 million year to date for 06 in interest Add it all up Veritas tax claim $900m Veritas Penalties $2.295B Veritas Interest $229m Symantec tax claim $100m Symantec Penalties $75m Symantec Interest $7.5m Grand Total Potential claim - $3.607 Billion Reality Check Symantec will fight the tax claim and will negotiate to reduce the penalties and interest charges. However, as there is a significant amount of pressure from Wall Street, they probably need to wrap this up quickly. No matter what they'll have to cook their estimates of what they think this will really cost into their reserves to provide a provision for it and that will hit the bottom line in their quarterly(may be there already). Others have pointed out that it might have been smart of Symantec to perform a little due dilligence of Veritas. I think Symantec is getting the picture now. They just bought an open can of worms and attracted the IRS's attention to look at their other transactions as well.

"In Silicon Valley you tend to get the idea right but the decade wrong."

"DiDio signed an SCO non-disclosure agreement and reported that she had seen 80 lines of code in the kernel that were copy-pasted from SCO's owned code. She could not, of course, reveal what they were"

"The entire Linux community is saying to customers, 'You're on your own,'" DiDio said. "That's not a place I want to be."

"This has the potential to turn into a twentieth century witch hunt,"

"A company has to .. be willing to risk not having an indemnification policy."

On the Open Source community ..

`Within the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' .. these people are like virtual suicide car bombers.'

Laura DiDio

I recently discovered Tagworld.com through Business 2.0's 25 websites to look out for. It has its sights on not only MySpace, but Yahoo 360/MSN Spaces as well. It has only been released for 4 months, but has close to 1,000,000 registered users. It's a combination of myspace + flickr + youtube + blogger + delicious, though with its design/layout, it seems to be aiming for MySpace tweens. It's currently offering 1 GB of space to upload/share videos/music. It's heavily Ajax-ed (and promotes that like crazy) and allows people to tag everything and search for tags along those lines. That's probably the only interesting aspect about it through, that a single tag search will yield several multi-media results. The founders Mr. Rifkin and Fred Krueger claim this isn't a build to flip company, but given their track record and if Viacom notices them, I expect them to give in quickly. It received its first round of private funding on Feb. 7th (3 months after launch) and employs 30 engineers.

Yes, I know it's possible, and Google's probably not doing anything to prevent it--but is Gmail for Chinese citizens Google-sanctioned or -encouraged? I'd like to understand why the Economist, the Times , the BBC, Red Herring , and others are reporting that Google's withholding Gmail from China. No cheap shots please.

How many of these American kids have their biological parents from China, India, any country in Africa, Phillipines, so on...Just curious.

Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India. The U.S. leads are greater for lesser degrees.

This article is a dupe for this. Groan - is it Sunday already? Cmon people - these dupes are hurting me eyes :(. Well, strictly speaking, not an exact dupe but darned if i care.

Oracle approximately wants to hire 10000 people in India. Its current strength is around 8600. Here is the 2006 data ..

From the brief description about the business the idea doesn't sound too radical for a VC(who typically stay away from risky early stage investments), and neither does it sound as something that requires VC money(typically in millions, not thousands). So I wonder why you need VC money?

As other commenters have already pointed out, first get your own skin in the game by investing your own money. Remember the golden order of early stage funding, founder->family->friends->fools. Only after you've exhausted these should you start looking at venture capital. VC money typically helps you scale up/expand rather than bootstrap.

Of course exceptions will always be there...but those are typically when you've got either a great idea(eg. Riya) or a great startup team or both. Simple ideas with unknown management teams don't even register in the eyes of VCs.

What's your personal belief in this regard, xtracto? Is the action of the Chinese government morally just in this instance? What do you personally believe?

Ok, here I go. just because you asked.

My belief is that, the United States of America should, no, must get its hands off all the other country politics and economics. They must stick into solving they not-so-tiny own internal problems. They must stop "liberating" other countries from their "tiranys" (that what revolutions where made for), they should stop caring what other countries legislation and economic practices are.

I am not a Chinnesse, but I really do not care of what the current laws are there, if they are or not a democracy. I live far from there, and if Chinesse do not get with me, I do not have to get with them.

That is why I wrote the example of the Mexican hotel, What the fuck has USA to do giving orders to a Mexican Hotel to apply a USA law?. If they do not like their people to talk with Cubans then, they should put them a chip in the brain that detects when they are talking with them and make it explode or whatever.

In my country, people is FREE to assossiate with anyone, as long as it is not again MY COUNTRY'S constitution, the USA, Canada, Iran, Spain or any other prohibit. Likewise, in my country smoking pod is not permitted, I do not care if a Dutch guy comes to my country and he is allowed to do it at home.

But the main thing here is that you (as a country/government/people from there) should not involve with other countries buissensses, if it is right or wrong with you, then you'd better care that it does not happens in you country and you should stop bombing whatever country you believe does not follow your consitution rules.

I repeat, that is why revolutions are made, when people INSIDE their country do not want the way it is being managed they make a revolution, it is a matter of internal national politics so USA (and any other country) should fuck off.

Anyway, that is what I thought, speciffically, I think Yahoo did a good thing, as they complied with the legislation of the country. I am sorry if my comments appears a bit upset but that is my opinion, not a troll, not a flamebait, just an opinion.

that runs on cow farts? I mean it would be a great idea in terms of green house gases! Kills two birds with one stone.

Nuclear plants can only replace power generation sources. In order to evaluate the real impact of power generation sources which don't emit CO2, let's compare the amount of CO2 emitted by existing "electricity production" facilities to all the other uses.

Amount of CO2 emitted in the US by sector in 1998 (million metric tons carbon per year):
Electricity production: 549.8
Industrial: 298.9 (477.7 minus 178.8)
Transportation: 484.2 (484.9 minus .7 from electricity)
Commercial: 60 (238.4 minus 178.4)
Residential: 92.6 (284.5 minus 191.9)
(Source: Energy Information Administration (mainly page 25))

Bottomline: electricity production accounts for 550 while the other players sum up to 936. And those 936 will be very hard to reduce because we will have to hackor replace every internal combustion engine, every classic heater... But we need (Kyoto) to reduce those emissions by at least 60% before 2050. Therefore the theory "nuclar plants will solve the greenhouse gas problem" is, as far as I understand, JAAL (Just Another Awful Lie).

Any thingie able to produce grid-electricity without polluting is interesting, but some write that nuclear plants are the only way. This is... well, you guessed it... JAAL, because most clean sources (sun, wind...) can do it.

In fact even the coal plants can be much cleaner, for example trough some clever design. Will be, in fact, instead of "can be", because some are building them right now. And don't think of it as some european gadget, see FutureGen.

Those clean sources, and even the clean coal-plants, do not produce dangerous waste and are more easy to build, run and dismantle than a nuclear plant. And they do not run amok, Chernobyl-style.

> 4000 people from Chernobyl? Wherever you are getting this from must be counting
> everyone that died in the area for whatever reason

No. This '4000' figure comes from recent (2005, September) evaluation by pro-nukes and is is very probably way underestimated.

Estimates:

GMail 5 million
(source: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14525&hed =Hackers+Cracked+Gmail)

Yahoo! Mail 219 million
HotMail 221 million
(source: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/45821.html)

Just because every geek has a gmail account doesn't mean that it has more than hotmail or yahoo mail.

You forget one thing good sir. Such highly tuned vehicles are not daily drivers. While I wouldn't call a Viper or any other large displacement vehicle one either, anyone who works on their own car can tell you that routine maintinence and upkeep can be serious hassle if you have a turbo or super charger. It's not the purchase of these fast cars that kills you, it's parts and labor. If you want some fun, iamgine stuffing the engine from a BMW 535d into a Honda.

Um, you might want to check back more often, latest news is that the Patent Office has admitted it will probably invalidate all of the patents held by NTP that are at the heart of the BlackBerry patent dispute. This will clear the way for RIM to resume "business as usual".

Here is the article claiming the bill passed. Not sure what to make of the latest story in light of what this is saying.

Not jus the WADND but also the Coalition for ICANN Transparency (CFIT) has sued VeriSign. Here's a news story that tells about both the lawsuits.

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14658&hed =VeriSign+Sued+by+Trade+Groups

I could be in a minority, but I almost never look at author links.

And I never look at miserable failure links. That's miserable failure links. The links that say miserable failure. I skip right over them.

Agreed that the story headline isn't worthy of the facts. Still, if an EMI exec has a "belief" there's a good chance he and his cronies will try twist enough arms to get what they want. At the moment they control most of the big acts, but that could change. Why couldn't Apple sign artists directly to iTunes exclusive contracts for example?

Listen to this interview with Steve Gordon, a music industry lawyer, and you'll find out a few gems. (It starts slowly, skip to about the middle of it.) In the interview he mentions that Apple is paying 70 of the 99 cents back to the music industry. Apple has to run iTunes and pay all the transaction costs out of the 20 cents they have left. They are lucky to break even on music sales. BUT...it drives sales of iPods, and the music industry covets that money. They feel that Jobs duped them in the deal.

Sure enough, the Red Herring article confirms this resentment: "We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don't have a share of iPod's revenue," he said. "We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only."

Does this sound reminiscent of the Google should pay to use our pipes argument we heard from SBC a month ago? The music distributors are in the same boat. They don't want to be commoditized or bypassed and they are coming up with all kinds of delusional ideas for bailing water out of their sinking ships.

Red Herring magazine is reporting that Google Wallet, the so-called "PayPal killer", may debut before Christmas. The article (http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14233&he d=Google+Wallet+May+Debut+Soon&sector=Industries&s ubsector=Communications) says Google Wallet might make it possible for anyone to click on a Google ad and make a purchase without leaving the site.

Google Ads, Google Wallet, Google Bank, Google Credit Card. It's all very natural.

Oh, I just submitted the following story:

It seems that Google is going to announce a new service called Google Base today at the invite only Google Zeitgeist conference. At the moment, we only have a few screenshots and a pretty interesting discussion at threadwatch.org. Conflicting rumors have pointed to a new Google database, classifieds like Craigslist, an Ebay contender or just another way to submit URLs.

You used to be right. From Red Herring:

The U.S. was responsible for 26.5 percent of the all spam trapped in Sophos' networks between April and September 2005.

Still, there is some good news: this is significantly lower than the 41.5 percent chalked up during the same period last year.

South Korea ranked No. 2 on the list with a share of 19.73 percent of all spam. Meanwhile, China ranked No. 3 with 15.7 percent. But the Middle Kingdom nearly doubled its share in the spamming market.

So the US is cutting back and other countries are surging.

Any correlation? September 21, 2005: "Recent reports have claimed it [Warner Brothers] may sell a stake in AOL to Microsoft." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4268864.stm September 23, 2005: "Bronfman Fires Back at Apple" http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13702&hed =Bronfman+Fires+Back+at+Apple Maybe... maybe not.

Actually, there's a cool parallel between that Slate article you mentioned and this Red Herring article. My understanding (and I didn't RTFM, just skimmed it) is the RIAA "wants, and will insist upon having, variable pricing", and doesn't believe there should be a uniform price of .99. Edgar Bronfman, Jr. proposed theaters charge higher prices for more expensive movies. Why, he reasoned, should you pay the same amount to see a $2 million movie as you would to see a $200 million one? So he was also one for variable pricing.

Fact is, variable pricing schemata won't work for movies and most fickle music consumers will be damned to pay more than a buck (when they're already playing fair and eschewing p2p apps ala Kazaa, Soul Seek and even AllOf MP3.com.

whats wrong with that? but there will be a hard time for other solutions to fit the regulation issues of the united states and everywhere else in the world , even if they block skype in china http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13516&hed =China+Telecom+Blocks+Skype regards

I read some of the reruns of this article on other sites (like Red Herring) and they pooh-pooh the idea that would should look down on the Commies. They essentially say "who are we to judge them"?! PUKE!

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13516&hed =China+Telecom+Blocks+Skype